


Unravelling

by Dareandwriteit



Series: Dadgnus and his detective son [3]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Patterns of Migration, spoilers for suffering game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-16
Updated: 2017-06-16
Packaged: 2018-11-14 23:43:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11218710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dareandwriteit/pseuds/Dareandwriteit
Summary: Magnus hopes that Wonderland's magic is unravelling. Angus is not so optimistic.Set in the Patterns of Migration universe.





	Unravelling

**Author's Note:**

  * For [goodnicepeople](https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodnicepeople/gifts).



> Note that there is some burning that happens, but it's not graphic.
> 
> This is a bit angsty, and things get pretty heated. It's weird writing Angus mad.
> 
> Also this was written in one sitting so be kind.

It had been years. Angus wasn’t sure how, but hours had become days, days went into weeks, then to months. Time passed here in a way it never had before the Bureau. There was no hoping for the next day to come, agonising over the sun set. Angus didn’t spend all his time waiting for that tomorrow where things would be better. 

This was tomorrow. 

Time was an odd thing. Angus never thought he’d truly understand it. He was older - a few years since anyone called him a _boy_ detective - but he didn’t feel it. Maybe he’d never felt like a child. Maybe he’d never stop feeling like one. 

Returning to the cottage Magnus’ and he shared after a few weeks on a case in Neverwinter was oddly nerve wracking. In the throws of the investigation, he had not felt the ache he did now. Homesickness was strange experience, one which he was arguably much too old for, but he never had a home to miss when he was the right age. 

He walked back for the last leg his journey. Money wasn’t exactly tight, but the claustrophobic carriages that left from the train station were uncomfortable. They reminded him of too many afternoons spent hiding from punishment in his closet, or from a suspect he was trailing. Besides, the air was nice out here. Fresh, with the wind buffered by the tall and rich oak trees that lined the open roads.

He met no-one on the road, which was hardly unexpected for this backwater village. Magnus had briefly considered moving to a city for the sake Angus’ education or work, but nothing ever came from these feelings. Angus could see Magnus didn’t really want to leave their village. He thrived in small communities, enjoyed knowing everyone’s name and what they liked. He wanted a family, that’s how he viewed his community. Extended family. Cities didn’t lend themselves to that. His friendliness wasn’t always welcome, and he couldn’t always tell that.

There had been a few times, more than a few if Angus thought about it, that Magnus had pulled Angus to one side. In the middle of a conversation with a group of new people. Magnus asked him quietly, ever so carefully, the exact same thing every time.

“What was it this time?”

And it would always be something small. You were talking a little loud. You were a bit too close to her. He doesn’t like talking about violent things. And Magnus would take it with a gentle nod, a quick thank you and return to the conversation. A little less brash, a little less Magnus. And it would make Angus feel hot waves of shame than Magnus had to change like that. But years had passed, somehow, and Magnus was still Magnus. He never learned.

Or maybe he never felt shame for himself. He only ever felt it on Angus’ behalf.

Angus arrived at the cottage, and still saw no-one. The passage of time was everywhere he looked: the splintered paint on the once new gate, the tree that bore his ever increasing height arching overhead as he approached the door, the long inactive doorbell rope frayed into string. Angus took his key from his shoe (a long standing habit of long bygone years where losing a key meant being locked out for the night) and let himself in.

Still no-one. Angus would have worried that Magnus had not taken his usual efforts to run up the path to meet him if not for the fact the dogs were missing too. Sure enough, the hook where their leads were usually tied was empty. Angus placed his hat and coat on the hook next to them. Magnus would be walking them for a while, so he had the house to himself.

Angus began by putting his luggage back in his room. It was odd walking up the stairs with such heavy bags in his arms, a task Magnus had never once let Angus take on. Not because he thought Angus couldn’t do it. It was a mark of kindness that Magnus treasured, a physical affection with no chance of offense or discomfort: no, it’s no trouble at all.

As Angus pulled his luggage into his room, he noticed Magnus’ door was ajar. From that glance, his eyes fell on something wholly familiar. Something he was sure he could build from memory, right down to the splintering floorboard where Magnus paced some nights. But something sharp and jarring stood out from the soft room. A square of sharp white, pinned to the wall.

Angus didn’t want to pry. As a detective, he thought it was unprofessional and impolite. It was Magnus’ private space and to enter it without permission was worse than pointless: he could use nothing from an investigation started from a dishonest beginning. As Magnus’ family, it worried him. 

Angus snuck into Magnus’ room. He stepped cautiously, despite knowing each and every creaky spot of the room. Magnus’ room was oddly simple: a closet, a bed, a comfortable chair in one corner. A fireplace in the wall that was made of simple exposed brick. And pinned to the middle of the wall was a white card which said:

GOVERNOR CALEN

Angus felt his blood run cold. Instinctively, he picked the card from the wall and inspected it. It was written by Magnus, that he was sure of. The words were uncertain in the way all things Magnus wrote were, a thousand hesistations shivering in every letter.

And from the corner of his eye, Angus saw another white card. This one was propped into the corner of the wardrobe, at what would be Magnus’ eye level. Angus took it down to look at it. This one said:

GOV’NER KALLEN

There was another at the head of the bed (GOVNR KALEN), another wedged into the skirting (GOVENER CALLEN), another in the lampshade (GROVERNER KAYLON). The more Angus looked, the more he found. Every possible view in the room had a card in view, with some variation of this one name on it.

Angus could barely hold them all. There were so many. He didn’t know what to do with them, other than collect them and hold them and hope they didn’t mean what he thought they did. He felt his blood rushing in his ears, could only hear the roaring of panic in his chest. He never even heard Magnus come in.

“Hey Ango, sorry I missed ya-”

“What is this?” Angus asked, turning to show Magnus his armfuls of cards.

Magnus looked confused for a moment, the cards seemingly new in his mind. And then, a spark. The connection landed. 

“Oh, it’s good news! I didn’t wanna tell you, not ‘til it was all sorted. Thought it might be a bit above your level.” Magnus walked into the room, and sat on the bed with his legs crossed. “You remember Wonderland, right?”

Angus didn’t respond. His face was entirely impassive, and it was not an easy illusion for him to pull off. Yes. Of course he remembered Wonderland. It took so much from Taako and Merle, it even took Magnus’ life in a way. And as quickly as things fell apart after that, he never quite forgot the sight of them the first time after Wonderland. Shadows of their formal selves.

“Well, I think it’s starting to wear off.” See Angus’ look Magnus quickly added, “I don’t know for sure, but I think their magic is finally… unravelling? Like, maybe I’ll remember soon. I kinda remembered already, just for a second, and I wrote it down. And when I look at it, I know it’s right and that’s who did it, so I figured if I wrote it down enough-”

“What makes you think it’s unravelling?” Angus asked, not any warmer.

Magnus ran an awkward hand over the back of his head. “Well… Taako’s got some sweet flips now, like he used to. And Merle doesn’t stumble in the dark so much? And holy shit Taako’s super hot now. And Merle was teachin’ his kids how to use a battleaxe, and if they lost all that and got it back-”

“They didn’t.” Angus said.

“Please. I’ve known the dummies for decades, I know when shit’s up.”

“It’s not remembering. It’s _experience_.” Angus said with complete sincerity. He knew about Merle changing his prescription lenses to help with dark vision. About Taako’s sunrise yoga. About Merle’s kids teaching him to use a battleaxe. About Taako’s modified disguise self spells burned at least twice a day. And part of him knew that Magnus knew all that too.

“But what if it’s not! We don’t know how any of that lich crap worked. I got my body back, didn’t I?” 

Angus felt himself getting mad, clutching the cards tightly in his fists. He never used to get angry. He would get scared, or nervous. He had no idea if angry was an improvement. Why didn’t Magnus listen? Why was he so damn stubborn?

“That was different!”

“You don’t know that!”

Angus felt himself seething with anger, but not at Magnus, at the unfairness of the facts. Magnus could do nothing for his life’s goal, for something that was once his driving force. Giving up his wife’s murderer in Wonderland took so much of a purpose from his life. Taako and Merle had taken over the quest of killing Governor Kalen, but Magnus could never know that. For all he knew it was all over. It kept him up at nights, and there were days where he would be mid-way through a sentence and just… break. As though his subconscious wandered to close to the abyss that had been left there and dragged him with it. He would be completely still for a few seconds, not blinking or breathing. And then he would continue, as though nothing happened.

It pained Angus terribly. So terribly he couldn’t think. He threw the cards into fireplace and ignited them with spell in the space of second.

“What did they say?! If you are remembering, what did they say?” Angus shouted, red in the face.

There was a beat. A moment between them that could not be undone.

Magnus leapt of the bed and plunged his hands into the fire.

Angus screamed, and pulled on Magnus’ back uselessly. He begged Magnus to stop, did everything in his power to get him away. But Magnus had fogged over, deaf and blind to everything around him. It was only a few seconds, but it felt like years.

Eventually Magnus slumped back from the fire, terribly burned hands clutching ashen scraps of card. They were truly illegible.

“I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry-” Angus was saying it over and over, until it no longer sounded like words, tears pouring down his face. Magnus took a slow, and measured, breath. 

“It’s ok.” Magnus breathed.

“I shouldn’t of, I shouldn’t have done that. They were yours and I just made you hurt yourself and now you can’t-”

“Hey.” Magnus said. “I’m the only one who made me do that.”

“But your wife-”

“Would call me a goober for doin’ that.”

“I’m sorry.” _For a lot of things_ was left unsaid.

“I’m sorry for scaring you,” said Magnus.

“If you want, I’ll tell you his name every day. First thing in the morning.”

“Ah, it can’t wait ‘til later than that. Ain’t gonna remember nothing ‘fore my coffee.”

They went and bandaged Magnus’ hands. They blistered for a while, and ached for a while longer. While Magnus couldn’t carve, Angus read to him. Angus stayed home until he didn’t need to change the dressings on Magnus’ hands. There were no cases that needed his attention like this. And every morning, Angus would tell Magnus about the mad Governor Kalen. And every morning Magnus would say:

“Not yet, shortstuff. Maybe tomorrow.”


End file.
